CafeX EVP Sajeel Hussain sees a convergence between the CRM space and contact centers and he's in a great position to know as the company's Live Assist provides omnichannel capability to potentially 10 million Microsoft Dynamics 365 customers via chat co-browse and video capabilities.

The solution comes out of the box with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the companies codeveloped the solution and have a Joint roadmap. The Azure cloud-based solution has delivered 4,500 trials in 12 months and has had 65 customer wins such as HP, District M and the NHS in the UK.

According to Sajeel the biggest pain points his company takes away for customers are are as follows.

Customers currently have point solutions and agents are forced to cut-and-paste between chat apps and CRM. They aren't able to see context. These problems all melt away with the Microsoft/CafeX solution.

Warm handoff: When it comes to AI, there is another plus to using CafeX. If you have automated chatbots powered by Microsoft's Azure cloud, you can seamlessly transfer customers to and from live agents to chatbots as needed. The chatbot can handle simple requests like what is the closest location or office hours. When things get tough, the conversation can be transferred to a live agent with full context.

Sajeel suggests that companies keep customers apprised of when they are chatting with a bot because otherwise it may look bad if the bot can't provide an answer for some reason and the customer thinks they are interacting with a person.

As you may recall, the company also sells a product called Chime and Amazon came out with a similar UCaaS product with the same name. Lawyers got involved and many billable hours later, Sujeel tells me the matter is close to being resolved.

Expect to see Live Assist tied into numerous platforms over time. Sujeel says he thinks they have learned how to do such integrations very well and they can replicate this success for their partners and their customers very quickly.

See also - some coverage of company's Chime solution when it first launched.